Corporate Event Ideas

How to choose a corporate event idea

Ideas are easy to find. The hard part is choosing one that leadership will fund and attendees will remember. Work through these questions before you settle on a format:

1. 1

   Name the goal

   Write one sentence: after this event, people will know, feel or do something specific. Connection, learning, pipeline, recognition and alignment each lead to different formats.

2. 2

   Know the audience

   Employees, customers, prospects, partners or executives. Consider how many, where they are based, how senior they are and what they would give up an afternoon for.

3. 3

   Pick the format

   In person, virtual or hybrid. If people are spread across offices or time zones, a hybrid program lets remote staff take part in the same event.

   Hybrid event platform
4. 4

   Set the budget and the date

   Agree a budget range before you fall for an idea. Avoid quarter ends, product releases and major holidays for your audience.

   Event budget guide
5. 5

   Decide how you will measure it

   Attendance, a post-event survey score, meetings booked or deals influenced. Decide now, so you set the event up to record it.

   How to measure event ROI

Team building and employee event ideas

Employee events work when people do something together rather than sit through a presentation. These ideas suit offices of any size:

• Live trivia with a leaderboard

  Teams answer questions on their phones and watch the leaderboard change in real time. Easy to run in a ballroom or online, and it mixes departments.

  Trivia and leaderboards

• Volunteer day

  A day at a food bank, a park clean-up or a school project. Pick a cause staff care about and partner with an organization that can host groups.

• Cross-team speed networking

  Short timed conversations between people from different teams, with a prompt for each round. A quick way to connect new hires and remote staff.

  Speed networking

• Innovation day or hackathon

  Small teams spend a day solving a real company problem and present to leadership. Commit in advance to acting on at least one idea.

• Skills workshops

  Short hands-on sessions run by colleagues or outside experts: presenting, negotiation, a new tool or a craft. Let people choose their sessions.

• Wellness day

  Fitness classes, walking meetings and healthy food. Keep it optional and low pressure, so it feels like a break, not a task.

Client and customer event ideas

Events for customers and prospects should give them something they cannot get from a sales call: peers, insight or access to your experts.

• Customer conference or user summit

  A day or more of product roadmaps, customer talks and training. The biggest commitment on this list, and often the one with the most to show for it.

  Conference management software

• Executive roundtable dinner

  A small, curated group of senior customers and prospects discussing one topic over dinner. Keep it to a table or two, so everyone talks.

  How to invite executives

• Product launch

  A launch event with a live demo, hands-on stations and your product team on hand. Stream it for customers who cannot travel.

  Plan a product launch event

• Workshops and training days

  Teach customers to get more from what they bought. Useful for retention and for finding expansion opportunities.

• Hosted meetings at a trade show

  Book one-to-one meetings with customers and prospects around an industry show you already attend, in a private room or at your booth.

  Business matchmaking

• Gala or charity dinner

  A seated dinner tied to a cause your company supports, with tables hosted by your executives.

  Gala dinner software

Company meeting and conference ideas

Internal meetings are corporate events too, and they get more attention when they are designed like one:

• Sales kickoff

  The start-of-year meeting that sets targets, launches plans and trains the team. Mix main-stage sessions with role plays and team breakouts.

• Hybrid town hall

  Leadership updates broadcast to every office, with live questions from the room and from remote staff.

  Live Q&A widget

• Leadership offsite

  Two days away from the office for a leadership team to make decisions. Give it a short agenda, a facilitator and a written list of outcomes.

• Internal conference

  A company-wide event with tracks by function, run like an industry conference with an agenda, speakers and an event app.

  Event mobile app

• Unconference

  Attendees propose and vote on the sessions on the day. Works well for technical teams and communities of practice.

Celebration and recognition ideas

Milestones, wins and holidays are reasons to bring people together without a business agenda. A few ideas that travel well:

• Awards night

  Recognize teams and individuals with categories staff help nominate. Keep speeches short and the list of winners shorter.

• Company anniversary

  Mark a milestone with a look back, customer and alumni guests, and a look ahead from leadership.

• Holiday party with a twist

  A themed party, a cooking class or a games night instead of the usual dinner. Offer options for people who do not drink.

• Family day

  Open the office or rent a park for staff and their families, with activities for children.

Corporate event ideas matched to goals

Use this table to shortlist ideas once you know the goal and the audience.

How Eventdex helps run corporate events

Eventdex is event management software. It does not book venues, caterers or entertainment; it runs the registration, the attendee experience and the data around your event.

• Branded registration

  A registration page with your branding, ticket types, registration questions and private links for invite-only events.

  Event registration software

• A white-label event app

  The agenda, live updates, polls and Q&A in an app with your company's name and branding.

  White-label event app

• Engagement on the day

  Live trivia and leaderboards, live Q&A and polls, and surveys after the event.

  Trivia and leaderboards

• Seating for dinners and galas

  Plan tables visually and let guests scan a QR code to find their seat.

  Event seating software

• Check-in and badges

  QR check-in, self-service kiosks and on-demand badge printing.

  Onsite event management